Ringfort (Rath), Ballymarcahaun, Co. Galway

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Ballymarcahaun, Co. Galway

On the Ordnance Survey maps of County Galway, a small annotation marks a cave inside a ringfort at Ballymarcahaun.

Go looking for it on the ground, however, and there is nothing to find. The cave has vanished from the surface entirely, leaving behind only its cartographic ghost and a quiet question about what, exactly, the surveyors who mapped it actually saw.

The ringfort itself, by contrast, survives in good condition within level pastureland. A rath, as this type of monument is known, is a roughly circular enclosure built during the early medieval period, typically between the fifth and twelfth centuries, and used as a defended farmstead. This one measures 23.5 metres in diameter and is defined by two concentric banks of earth and stone with a fosse, or ditch, running between them. The inner face of the inner bank is reinforced with stone, a detail that suggests some care in its original construction. At the south-east, a causewayed entrance gap just 1.6 metres wide is still legible, its sides stone-lined, narrow enough that it would have been straightforward to defend or block. The double-bank arrangement places this among the more substantial examples of the type, which were generally associated with higher-status households in the early medieval landscape.

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Pete F
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